Lost in the Florian Triangle
by driflew
Summary: Brook's life is only the first thing taken from him by an unforgiving sea. (recently changed my handle: somefangirl driflew!)


**This is my piece for the Mother Sea Zine! It's a free zine focusing on character backstories, and you can view/download it through their tumblr! **

* * *

There's no physical sensation in death. Pain is easiest to notice, the instant loss of aching in his body, the poison that had taken his life gone as quickly as it had appeared. As Brook leaves his body, he notices no wind against his face, and the absence of the ever-familiar scent of the sea. He senses his surroundings more than he sees them, though it isn't like it matters much. He'd pass through any objects he'd hit in his blindness.

His body—soul?—moves on its own, until suddenly it doesn't. Rejected by death, Brook is turned loose upon the world, his return to life the first of many tasks left to him to figure out alone. He diverts all his focus on scouring the foggy seas for his old ship. The ocean is too large for one man to search on his own, so he can't waste thoughts on mourning himself, let alone everyone else. At least, that's what he tells himself.

He can't feel pain in a body like this, anyway.

Days turn to weeks turn to months, and Brook struggles to remember what the sea smells like, even as his soul floats just above the water.

Brook's ship has floated unoccupied for something like a year by the time he reaches it. Even after thinking of nothing but his body for months, he still hesitates before diving down to meet it.

His body scares him, of course, but he reunites with it all the same. His senses return just as suddenly as they'd left him a year ago. The wood of the ship against his back, the howl of the wind against his face, the sight of the fog up above him, and above it all the overwhelming smell of rot permeating every inch of the deck.

Brook sits up. He'd been unsure his body would move at all, but without muscles to stiffen and cramp from lack of use or even weigh him down, his body feels lighter and more mobile than ever. He nearly throws his torso into his lap, overshooting how much effort it would take him to move. It leaves him with his head down towards the deck he now sits in the center of.

Thicker than any fog is the rancid cloud which haunts the old ship, with Brook dead center. Had he food in his stomach—or had he a stomach at all, he realizes—Brook may have vomited.

Brook stands. His clothes hang loose on his body now, holding tight to months-old folds sealed into place by year-old blood. He'll have to find a change, though doing so requires...

Maneuvering the deck would be hard even on the most disgusting of days. Rain, snow, frigid cold or sweltering heat... None of it kept the deck clear. No matter the weather, Brook could hardly get from point A to point B without stepping on someone's toes. Beautiful sunny days were even harder to navigate than rainy ones, where men would scurry up and down the riggings just to find the room to enjoy the nice weather. However, the deck is now far more crowded than ever before. He'd taken center stage in their last show, and finds himself in the middle of a hundred corpses identical to him. Bodies lay strewn across every plank, over the rails, on top of one another. When he looks around he can scarcely see wood, instead finding cloth and bone as far as the eye can see. Or, not eye. Not anymore.

At least without eyes, Brook cannot cry. Or so he tells himself. If he started mourning now, he'd never get this deck clean, and his friends deserve better resting than this.

Brook throws himself entirely into ship maintenance. Of course, the first step to maintaining the ship is cleaning it. He clears his beloved crew away into coffins, keeping the skull and lowering the body into the sea. He doesn't have room for all of them, not without sacrificing most of the ship. He'd considered leaving them to rest in the men's quarters, but not enough of the hammocks have avoided the ravaging of bugs and rot to hold all his friends. At least their bodies being all bones makes them lighter, as Brook has always been more agile than strong. He doubts he could have lifted all his friends had they their flesh—Especially without any muscle!

What's harder than moving his friends is identifying them. While the fact his friends' bodies are not quite recognizable makes it easier to distance himself from just what he's doing, it makes a respectful burial that much harder. Time has defaced his friends just the same as it has him, so most of it comes down to recognizing their clothes. Some of them have fed most of their outfits to the moss that's taken over the ship, and some of them... Though Brook tries his hardest, he isn't able to tell everyone apart. He can rule out his friends whose bodies are accounted for, but not all of his crew is still on board. Some fell overboard in the fray and drowned, or were lost when pieces of the ship broke apart in the following decay. He's sure a few of his friends' bodies went cold on the boards of their murderers' vessel, and those men will likely never rest with the respect they deserve. Brook can do little else for these men but remember their names, even if he hasn't the skull to put it to.

After a few of the coffins have been filled, Brook finds skeletons don't really scare him anymore. He has no idea how long he works. Time is impossible when fog covers the sun, though Brook knows it must be hours. He could be working for days, or even weeks. The work of clearing just one body away feels like an eternity.

After all the bodies have been put to rest, he attends the rudder. He's no navigator, but surely he could do something to at least get to the next island. And maybe once he's free from this fog, he could pick up someone who knew what they were doing. Sure, his appearance is a little more dreadful than it used to be, but he's seen scarier pirates on these sees. And besides, there's no shortage of men in this world who love music. So long as he continues sailing under the same philosophy that Yorki once taught him, he's sure he could gather another crew just as wonderful as the one he once had.

Though, once he did get out, it would be hard to continue with Yorki's ideal of helping crying children laugh again. A face like his would probably only make things worse. Hopefully his new crew would be willing to help him. If they weren't willing to help those who needed it most, how could they be trusted to help him reach Laboon, or to comfort Laboon once he learned what happened to the rest of them? If they understand the power of music, they must. There's a reason every crew is in need of a good musician.

Brook's plans are dashed once he reaches the wheel. He pushes it to no avail, his ship pressing on as though he'd done nothing at all.

It would take Brook a few more failed attempts at steering over the next few hours to finally admit the rudder is broken. His hope silently erodes with each desperate, useless turn of the wheel. He'll have to drift, then. He can drift. The ocean is vast, but not so vast that he will be stuck here forever. He and his friends planned to travel the world in just a few short years. How long could it possibly take to leave this fog, to find land again? How long could he possibly drift for? His ship has already drifted for a year, he must be close to the edge of the fog by now. He'll be in the sun again before he knows it.

The idea excites him, of course. He's forgotten what it feels like to have the sun's warmth on his skin. Though, it's not like he has skin anymore. Can he still feel warmth without it? The chill of death has already taken his ability to be cold. Will it take that away, too?

Cleaning the ship becomes the only way for Brook to pass the time. Focusing on whatever task is at hand keeps Brook's mind from going elsewhere, wherever that may be. Eventually his cleaning takes him to the kitchen, though all that remains there is tables. The food has long since rotted, and their drinks have long since dried up. Brook is lucky not to have a stomach, at least. He can't starve without one. Not like he would have known how to cook anything, anyway. He was never good at much of anything that wasn't music or swords.

Still, Brook had once enjoyed food. Maybe once he's back on land, he'll try eating and see if he's able to eat it. He's learned a lot of his former bodily functions are now optional—It'd taken him a while to notice after he woke up, but breathing is no longer automatic. He must make an effort if he wants to, though he does. The slight whistle of wind in his head is the only thing reminding him he still inhabits a body, and his soul hasn't left it once again.

Brook never imagined something as simple as breathing could make him feel so connected to the world, but it comforts him. Everything on Earth breathes. He's not so different.

Even with his upkeep, Brook's ship is far from the state it once was, its loud colors having long since faded and its proud mast leaning off to the side. Brook loved watching the stars from up there, not that there are any stars to watch now.

It's funny. Out on the ocean, far away from the lights of the land, Brook had always been so impressed with how many stars one could see if they just looked. Now even that simple joy is so far out of reach. Even the most basic of ways to connect with another person—to share with them the same sky—has been taken from Brook.

Brook covers every mirror on the ship. He has enough bedsheets to do it, given all the unexpected vacancies around the ship. One would think fear had driven his decision—and he'd be lying if he said his reflection hadn't scared him once or twice—but by the time he came around to throwing the sheets up he'd long since numbed to the sight of skeletons. No, his motivations in this endeavor are different. When his ship was alive, it was hard to be anywhere without another person. The crew, with more members than Brook could have counted, made it so even looking in the mirror was a group activity. Finding himself alone is stranger than finding himself dead. Better to hide it.

Occasionally a mirror comes uncovered by wind or the ship's rocking, or Brook has to replace a particularly beat-up bedsheet. He only sees himself in those moments, and he can see how long he's been alone. He can't track how long it had been since his death through his face, but he can see the years by how much worse his clothes have become. Despite his best efforts to keep clean and presentable—One never knows who they might bump into out on the seas!—His suits are slowly eroding in the elements. He had to toss the one he'd died in, and the others are in varying states of disrepair. He hates seeing it, so replacement sheets are up as fast as they fall.

After something like 45 years on the sea, Brook finally runs into other living and undead beings. Despite 45 years of silence proving otherwise,, not only is Brook not the only one on this sea, but his neighbors are even scarier creatures than him! His time on the island, however, is short-lived, and he who had already lost so much of himself left Thriller Bark with even less.

It's hard to tell he no longer has a shadow. There is no sunlight on this ocean, and his lamps and lights have all long-since burned out. It's almost easy to forget he even really lost it—Reality felt thin being alone so long, and sometimes it was almost easy to imagine that he had dreamt the whole adventure out of some mix of loneliness or boredom.

The next time a mirror comes uncovered, Brook finds his detestable reflection gone, and realizes that seeing an empty room reflected back at him past the half-down sheet is so much more terrifying than he ever would have imagined.

The world has taken everything from Brook. His friends, his connection with others, his ability to make any new relationships. His face, his humanity, even pieces of himself meant to be integral. He's lost things he was never meant to survive without and kept walking. So many simple things he took too easily for granted when he was alive. Even breathing, which stops when he forgets to make himself, is gone. He looks in the mirror and finds himself completely gone. If he weren't able to look down and see what's left of his hands, there would be no proof he was ever here at all.

But it's much more honest, isn't it?

Thousands of times over the last few years Brook had considered how little he'd meant to the world. His crew is gone, made now only of cracked skulls left in dusty coffins. Even if his friends who left with Yorki survived the Calm Belt and all its monsters, and survived their illness with how badly it had hurt them… It's been 45 years. They'd be well into their 80s, their 90s, their graves. He'd never see any of them again. Old age has probably taken them. It's only by some strange, terrible luck that age seems to have forgotten Brook altogether, his old joints feeling fresh and new as the day he died.

Brook has been preserved all this time in the hopes he'd see Laboon again, but is Laboon still there? He's been a sitting duck for anyone who enters the Grand Line. Crocus, if he's even alive, may not have been able to protect Laboon all this time. Laboon could have succumbed to illness, or even to aging himself. It's not like Brook knows how long whales actually live there.

Laboon could even have left. He might not be waiting there for them anymore. He may be somewhere else in the world, swimming with new friends, believing they'd abandoned him. He could be somewhere else in the world, swimming alone. And if he is waiting, what does that make Brook, the one who kept him waiting there? Brook knows how painful that purposeless floating, hopeless waiting is. Has Brook doomed his dear friend to the same lifetime of loneliness he himself has suffered?

All the more reason Brook must go back, of course. If Laboon truly is still there, Brook has 45 years worth of apologizing to do (so far, at least). It's all Brook can do. Keep looking forwards.

Brook covers the mirror once more and heads back on deck, humming to himself. A soft exhale of breath, disrupting the fog around him.

Recently, Brook found some tea stored deep within the deck. He hadn't been big on the drink before, but he busies himself in the kitchen, trying to make a pot. The old kettle surprises him in its sturdiness, still effective after nearly half a century. Soon enough, Brook has a cup, held tight in skeletal hands.

Turns out he can still feel warmth, after all.

The ship drifts onwards. Soft music follows it as it goes.

* * *

**Thank you for reading! I had a lot of fun participating in this zine (plus my boyfriend / a few of my friends are in it), and I recommend checking it out!**


End file.
